Abstract

In this chapter, we introduce the marriage between aggregation-induced emission and supramolecular coordination complexes, in which the two concepts melt into one that enables a new kind of light-emitting metal-organic materials based on discrete metallacycles and metallacages. On these platforms, influences of factors including geometrical, shape, anion, and nanoconfinement effects on material photophysics have all been well addressed. Therefore, promising applications such as sensors for nitroaromatics, heparin and amino acids, agents for cell imaging and theranostics, and light-emitting supramolecular polymers or biohybrid metal-organic materials with responsive fluorescence, have already been achieved. We believe that the emerging platform highlighted in this chapter not only provides insight into the understanding and application of aggregation-induced emission, but also serves as a foundation for light-emitting metal-organic materials.

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Acknowledgment

We are very grateful to Professors Ben Zhong Tang and Youhong Tang for the kind invitation and guidance. We are also very thankful to Professor Peter J. Stang for his enormous help, support, and encouragement. Dr. Ye Tian, Dr. Guocan Yu, and Mr. Zhixuan Zhou are greatly acknowledged for their help on the preparation of this chapter. M.Z. is thankful for startup funds from Xi’an Jiaotong University and National Program for Thousand Young Talents Program. F.H. thanks the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21434005, 91527301, 21620102006) for financial support.